This invention relates generally to prioritized text such as prioritized email messages, and more particularly to electronic device alerting for such prioritized text.
Electronic mail programs have become a popular application among computer users. Especially with the advent of the Internet, exchanging email has almost become a reason why people purchase computers for personal reasons, and within many corporate environments, email has become the standard manner by which coworkers exchange information. However, with the increasing popularity of email, shortcomings have become apparent.
Chief among these shortcomings is that many users now face a deluge of email every day, such that the capability of being able to send and receive email has almost become a hindrance to their day-to-day ability to get their job done, as opposed to being an asset. Some users report receiving over 100 email messages a day. With such large numbers of email, it is difficult to manage the email, such that the users read the most important messages first.
Limited solutions to this problem have been attempted in the prior art. Prior art exists for attempting to curtail the amount of junk emailxe2x80x94e.g., unsolicited email, typically regarding a service or product for salexe2x80x94that users receive. Moreover, some electronic mail programs allow for the generation of rules that govern how an email is managed within the programxe2x80x94for example, placing all emails from certain coworkers in a special folder.
These limited solutions, however, do not strike at the basic problem behind emailxe2x80x94that with so much email being received, it would be most useful for a user to be able to have his or her computer automatically prioritize the email by importance or review urgency, and perform actions based on that prioritization. For these and other reasons, there is a need for the present invention.
The invention relates to electronic device alerting for prioritized text. In one embodiment, a computer-implemented method first receives a text. The method generates a priority of the text, based on a text classifier such as a Bayesian classifier or a support-vector machine classifier. The method then alerts a user on an electronic device, such as a pager or a cellular phone, based on an alert criteria.
Embodiments of the invention provide for advantages over the prior art. A user, for example, in one embodiment, may ask that he or she only be disturbed if the priority of the text is greater than a given threshold. Thus, even if the user receives over 100 different email, he or she will be alerted to the most important email, and then will be able to deal with the other email when the user has time. Prioritization, in other words, makes email much more useful in environments where a lot of email is exchanged on a regular basis.